Shoppers attracted by the lower prices at Amazon's music store may stick around to buy other products sold by the online retailer.

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It was easy to scoff two years ago when word leaked out that Amazon was launching its own digital music service. The Seattle-based online retailer wasn't just mulling an iTunes-like download store - it was supposedly drawing up plans for a branded iPod-like device.

But Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had a much better plan for a digital music offering than his naysayers realized. Ten months after its debut, Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) has overtaken competitors like Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) and RealNetworks' (RNWK) Rhapsody to become the second biggest online store after iTunes, according to market research firm NPD. Now two music industry sources tell Fortune that Amazon is talking to MySpace (NWS, Fortune 500) about becoming the social networking giant's download store partner when it rolls out its highly anticipated joint venture with Universal, Warner Music and SonyBMG in September.

MySpace and Amazon declined to comment on any pending deal.

Amazon still trails Apple by a huge margin. NPD doesn't release detailed market-share data, but Russ Crupnick, the firm's senior entertainment industry analyst, says iTunes still controls more then three-quarters of the Internet music store market. By contrast, Amazon's market share is in the single digits. "There is a tremendous gap between number one and number two," he says.

Even so, Amazon may have a better chance of chipping away Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) dominance than any of its other rivals. MySpace plans to let its 120 million users stream entire songs before downloading them for a yet-to-be-specified price. That could be a powerful sales tool for Amazon. Why go to iTunes to purchase the Justin Timberlake song you just heard on MySpace when you can buy it instantly with one click, courtesy of Amazon?

How did Amazon wind up in such a promising position after less than a year in the digital music business? Well, for one thing, it scrapped whatever plans it may have had for a branded-MP3 player. How many people do you know who would have ditched their beloved iPod for what industry wags referred to as the aPod. Sure, we all shop at Amazon. But it doesn't have Apple's cool factor. (Amazon, it should be noted, did go ahead with the Kindle, its oddly named wireless book reading gadget.)

Instead, the web retailer rolled out a download store that became the first to sell songs from four major music companies without digital rights management software, referred to in the music industry by its forbidding acronym: DRM.

Until recently, record companies insisted that digital music stories use DRM. Why? Because the software limits the number of times you can copy a song. But consumers hate it because it's such a pain in the neck.

If you were one of the few people who owned a Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) Zune, you couldn't play songs purchased on iTunes. That's because Zunes were stuffed with Microsoft software, and it wouldn't play songs wrapped in Apple's DRM. iPod owners couldn't play tracks purchased from Yahoo because the portal's music store used, you guessed it, Microsoft DRM.

By the time Amazon launched its download service, it had dawned on the major labels that DRM wasn't protecting the legitimate online music business - it was stifling its growth. The retailer persuaded them to license it songs with no copy protection so they could be played on any device. "It had an enormous impact," say Sam Heyworth, group product manager for Amazon's MP3 store. "Going DRM-free really helped."

Here's another thing that helped. Amazon wouldn't have attracted many customers if it sold songs for 99 cents just like iTunes. So it cut its prices. Today, Amazon offers one-sixth of the 5.9 million tunes in its library - including the 100 most popular tracks - for 89 cents each. It sells some classic albums - like Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" - for as little as $1.98.

It's tough for a pure-play digital music company like Napster to slash prices like that. But Amazon is betting that some of the people who buy a cheap jazz album will stick around and also purchase a $149 digital camera. "Amazon's game here is like Target or Best Buy," says Ted Cohen, managing partner of TAG Strategic, a digital entertainment consulting firm.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Amazon uses music to sell cameras. Apple uses it to sell iPods. Maybe the folks in Cupertino, Calif., should be a little scared. Okay, maybe not scared. Amazon still has a long way to go. But perhaps Apple should be concerned. It's finally dealing with a competitor that looks at digital music the same way it does.

Could The Dark Knight overtake Titanic to become the largest grossing domestic movie of all time? In just 13 days, The Dark Knight has taken in over $342.6 million domestically, and another $128.3 million internationally. The film is already in the top 15 films of all time, and is adding millions more each day. But will Batman be able to top Titanic’s $600.7 million record? Box office analysts admit that it isn’t out of the question. Most people expect the film to take in at least another $80 million, but who knows how much more.Titanic was the number one movie at the box office for almost three-and-a-half months, but The Dark Knight got the head start that Titanic never had. Titanic took eight weeks to do what The Dark Knight did in less than two. A mid-summer release date means that The Dark Knight will have to contend with a lot more competition than James Cameron’s film, which bowed during Oscar season. No one knows if The Dark Knight have the legs to take the Titanic record. Fans are seeing the movie two or three times, and a lot of moviegoers have yet to see the film due to ticket sellouts and packed theaters.

Popular radio shockjock Howard Stern will produce a remake of Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, the 1979 cult classic which starred the iconic punk band The Ramones.

Alex Winter, who we all know and love as the excellent Bill S. Preston, Esq. in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, will pen the script.

Stern, who has interviewed The Ramones many times over the years on his radio show, said he got involved with the remake because he is a fan of the original Roger Corman-produced musical comedy.

The original film starred PJ Soles as Riff Randell, a rebellious punk rock-loving teenager who would do anything to go see her favorite band, The Ramones, in concert. But her music-hating oppressive high school principal Miss Togar has other plans for her. With the help of The Ramones, Riff and her friends prepare to take over the school and oust the evil Togar.

Winter, who has transitioned from actor to writer/director since his Excellent Adventure days, said “This movie seemed so ripe for a remake.” Umm… no it’s NOT. As much as I love Howard Stern and Alex Winter, I LOVE The Ramones way more and think a remake is a horrible idea and that it will only desecrate the memory of The Ramones.

The original was based around the music and iconic status of The Ramones and the rebellion inspired by the 1970’s wave of punk rock music. What band of today will they get for the remake? The fucking Jonas Brothers? Seriously, what fucking band? There’s no way to even make a new movie around The Ramones even if they wanted to, because three of the four original band members have passed away.

The original Rock ‘n’ Roll High School is one of my favorite movies of ALL time. In the summer of 1984, my best friend rented it at the video store and watched it every single day. It changed my life!!!! And believe it or not, this movie still holds up today, because not only does the concept of teenage rebellion transcend generations, but so does the music of The Ramones.

While I don’t particularly love remakes in general, I can tolerate some of them and even enjoy them sometimes. But this one is just going too fucking far. Just write a movie from scratch and call it something else and leave Rock ‘n’ Roll High School out it. And as Riff would say, if you don’t like it, you can put it where the monkey puts the nut.

The new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, has been the biggest film release of the year so far by a mile. Warner Bros. has claimed victory in fighting off Piracy during the release of the movie, despite taunting from the torrent site, The Pirate Bay.

Pirate versions of the movie began appearing on The Pirate Bay a few days after the film was publicly released. However, this short piracy free period is apparently very important for the film’s distributor, Warner Bros. With the film being exceptionally popular it is no wonder it was a big target for pirates.

38 Hours = Victory?

It was approximately 38 hours after the film went on general release that The Dark Knight torrent was first spotted on various BitTorrent sites on the Internet. Once it was out, there was little that Warner could do about it, with the film spreading like a virus across the Web.

38 hours may not seem like much, but in this generation of digital distribution, hours are as important as days used to be for the old-school bootleggers on street corners.

Six Month Anti-Piracy Measures

The film was always guaranteed to be a hit, but studio executives knew that an early leak of the film to online sources could prevent the record-breaking opening weekend that ended up becoming a reality.

So Warner Bros. devoted six months to an unprecedented anti-piracy strategy. A chain of custody was created between post-production and release which meant that the people who had a copy of the film at any one time were tracked.

Shipping and delivery schedules were staggered, and spot checks were carried out both domestically and overseas to ensure illegal copying of the film wasn’t taking place in cinemas.

Pirate Supply Chain

Darcy Antonellis, president of Warner’s distribution and technical operations told the LA Times:

“One of the reasons why it’s so important to try to protect the first weekend is that it prevents the pirate supply chain from starting,”

“A day or two becomes really, really significant. You’ve delayed disc manufacturing that then delays distribution, which then delays those discs from ending up on street corners for sale.”

Even after the film was released, Warner Bros. carried on the fight, with a team scanning peer-to-peer networks looking for the first crack in the digital dam.

Necessity for Movie Studios

As we know, The Pirate Bay made full use of the film finally leaking, by taunting the movie studios and the MPAA. But the studio itself probably sees the 38 hours its property survived untarnished as a victory, especially given many films leak before even being released.

These sorts of anti-piracy measures are only going to increase in complexity and harshness, as the studios can’t afford to have their big summer releases leaked on to the Web before the film is even released.

That said a lot of the feedback about the pirate version of The Dark Knight is that people watch the pirated version after they have seen the genuine movie in the cinema. They simply want to watch the movie again at home and don’t want to wait for the DVD release. So the impact of low quality copies appearing online could have a less significant impact than the movie industry expects.

Contributors to McCain's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination included Rick Hilton. In fact, Hilton was so enthusiastic about his candidate of choice that, The Times' Tina Daunt reports, federal records show he donated twice as much as the law allows (the campaign returned the excess).

Now, of course, daughter Paris Hilton is the costar (along with Britney Spears) in a controversial new McCain ad aimed at ridiculing Barack Obama.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it seems that the new McCain ad criticizing Obama for being a celebrity has ruffled some unintended feathers. I, for one, quite liked the ad, but I hear whispers from the inner campaign staff that the phone was burning off the hook today with calls from Paris Hilton's grandfather, William Barron Hilton (co-chair of the Hilton Hotel empire), furious that the McCain ad drew an unflattering comparison between Obama and his own granddaughter...

...Apparently, the elder Hiltons had breathed a sigh of relief that Paris was starting to get her act together since hitting rock bottom with her stay in jail last year, when all of a sudden the McCain ad compares her unfavorably to Britney Spears and Barack Obama.

Who would have thought presidential politics would be what dragged Paris back into the spotlight.

Police say rapper Snoop Dogg's tour bus was pulled over for an expired registration sticker, but troopers smelled marijuana and searched the bus for drugs, finding two ounces.

CORSICANA, Texas - A tour bus carrying hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg was pulled over and two people were arrested on marijuana possession charges Thursday a few hours before a concert in Dallas, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety said.

DPS spokesman Charlie Morgan said members of a commercial vehicle inspection team pulled the bus over on Interstate 45 in Corsicana because the vehicle had an expired registration sticker. Troopers searched the bus for drugs after they said they smelled marijuana and found two ounces of the drug, he said.

Ethan Calhoun, 27, and Kevin Barkey, 26, were arrested on drug charges after admitting the drugs belonged to them, Morgan told The Associated Press. Both men were taken to the Navarro County Jail and face fines of up to $2,000 and six months in jail if convicted, Morgan said. Bond was set at $1,500 each

The Corsicana Daily Sun reported the men appeared before a justice of the peace and were released after posting bond.

Snoop Dogg, whose birth name is Cordozar Calvin Broadus Jr., was not arrested. His agent had no comment, a secretary said. Calls to public relations representatives for the rapper were not immediately returned Thursday evening.

He was arrested last year at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, Calif., on suspicion of transporting marijuana.

Police later charged him with gun possession after finding a firearm in his home. He pleaded no contest in April 2007 to felony gun and marijuana charges and agreed to five years’ probation and 800 hours of community service.

He was scheduled to appear at a concert near the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. He is on tour with alternative rock group 311.

Hollywood's youngest superstar isn't in it for the glory, the fame, or even the women—he's in it to make truckloads of money.

-By Peter Rubin-Photographs by Steven Klein

If you ever have reason to meet Shia LaBeouf, you should be prepared to be addressed as "boss." Or "bro," or "man," or "baby," or possibly "son," depending on how much you know about hip-hop. "Hey, boss," LaBeouf says to the guy behind the counter at a Santa Monica restaurant one afternoon in late May, "is it cool if we just get a couple of coffees and sit outside?"

It's hard to tell whether the waiter recognizes him. LaBeouf is doing reshoots for this month's Eagle Eye, directed by D.J. Caruso—it's a highbrow thriller about two Americans framed as political assassins by a terrorist cell—so he has a little more scruff than usual, and with his cap pulled down far enough he could be any underemployed L.A. actor getting his caffeine fix. He's wearing skinnyish black jeans, a threadbare Emerson, Lake & Palmer T-shirt, and beat-up brown Nike Cortezes. His girlish eyelashes, cheeks, and mouth are obscured by the beard and the cap, which makes him look older than he does in the YouTube video that made the rounds in the spring—the one of him drunkenly calling his friend a "faggot" and begging to be slapped in the face. But LaBeouf's swagger—the "boss"ing and "man"ing—suggests fresh confidence, the kind that comes from having recently had your name attached to two blockbuster franchises. It also suggests some defensiveness. That "faggot" video, plus a misdemeanor arrest and a few other glancing blows this year to his still-developing image, has made him zip himself up a little tighter. While once he publicly joked about his regrettable movie choices, like Dumber and Dumberer, and break-danced with abandon for Craig Kilborn, LaBeouf is more inhibited now, more likely to use terms like role model.

LaBeouf in the trailer for Eagle Eye, due in theaters September 26, 2008

Since his first major part, in Disney's 2003 sleeper hit Holes, LaBeouf, 22, has been in some very big movies. Last summer's Transformers grossed $700 million worldwide, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull may whip-crack past that. He's also been in some smaller movies that outperformed expectations—last year's teen thriller Disturbia made more than five times its $20 million budget at the box office. But he hasn't really been the focal point of a big movie—until now. Much as Disturbia recalled Rear Window, Eagle Eye, in which LaBeouf stars opposite Michelle Monaghan, brings North by Northwest into the age of the Patriot Act. LaBeouf, who cold-called his first agent at the age of 12 and promptly nailed an audition with a Disney casting director, leans heavily on his swagger to downplay the pressure of doing a movie with a $100 million-plus budget that is executive-produced by Steven Spielberg—who has reportedly called him a young Tom Hanks. "I never chose to do this because there was meaning in it or I was talented or gave a shit about acting," LaBeouf says. "I got into this because I was broke."

Working actors are generally either enigmas or exhibitionists. Usually the good ones are the former and the bad ones the latter. But if you want to propel yourself from noteworthiness to superstardom, you have no choice but to sacrifice some of your mystery for relatability. George Clooney did this with his ring-a-ding-ding boys' club; Tom Cruise does it by styling himself the village elder of Hollywood—Mr. Propriety. Demigods of the public imagination onscreen and in life, these actors are insulated from the damage that a few lackluster films—or even a box-office bomb—can do. "There's a form of selling out," LaBeouf says. "It's necessary. You have to become edible for people in Texas. You have to become edible for the Christian right, for mass audiences." Right now, he's doing that two ways: by joining up with two tent-pole franchises—Transformers and Indy—and by micromanaging his own palatability. Being a 22-year-old kid, though, he sometimes runs into image-management problems.

Over a three-month period in the past year, LaBeouf got into a series of entanglements with the law. Last November, he walked into a Chicago Walgreens to buy cigarettes, had a drunken argument with a security guard, and was arrested for trespassing after refusing to leave the store. In February, he was cited for smoking a cigarette on public property in Burbank, California. A few weeks later an arrest warrant was issued when he failed to appear in court for that charge. "I don't ever remember getting arrested sober. I was always arrested drunk," he says. "It's when I'm drinking that I don't have the wherewithal to be able to realize the position of my life. There's too much at stake for me to throw it away. I enjoy what I'm able to give my family. I enjoy the people that I'm able to wake up and work with. And I don't want to throw away what I've worked so hard for 12 years to achieve, based on an argument that takes place in 20 minutes." By the time LaBeouf lit out on the Indiana Jones promotional tour in the spring, the mini-scandals were regularly being used by reporters as segues into questions about his upbringing.

LaBeouf on his childhood fascination with the Indiana Jones franchise

An only child, LaBeouf grew up poor in Echo Park, then a working-class Latino neighborhood in L.A. "None of my friends were ever as broke as I was," he says. "That's not some dramatic spinning of a tale—my uncle was going to adopt me at one point because my parents couldn't afford to have me anymore. They had too much pride to go on welfare or food stamps."

Whether it's a dramatic spinning of a tale is beside the point; LaBeouf's childhood has become his chosen mythology. Before the milk for his coffee has arrived, he's run through the highlights in an uninterrupted stream: His parents sold snow cones and hot dogs in a park near their apartment while LaBeouf, in a clown costume, japed for customers; as a 12-year-old, he did X-rated stand-up in Pasadena comedy clubs; his mother, Shayna Saide, is an American-born Russian-Jewish ballerina whose mother ran with Allen Ginsberg; her mother played piano on Lucky Luciano's gambling boat. LaBeouf says his father, a Vietnam vet named Jeffrey LaBeouf, had a heroin problem. And that in addition to being a commedia dell'arte—trained mime, he was a weed dealer who grew his crop on the sides of freeways. And that he's credited with bringing the sinsemilla seed to Hawaii, giving a continent of thankful stoners the Thai stick. The lore cascades out of LaBeouf in unsolicited torrents—and free of taboos. "It's just my family was raised differently," he says. "It was never 'Drugs!' It was never like that for my family, which helped me because I never had a curiosity, it was never closed off. It was always out in the open and it was always explained to me. I'm so grateful for that. It's why I never tried anything beyond marijuana or drinking. I mean, I know that I personally can't do any of it. And so I don't."

"Every actor chooses their story at the beginning," he says. "There's this weird dichotomy of having to appear human yet be a mysterious entity in order to continue doing your craft. I need something to talk about, and then you don't have to get into deep, personal introspection."

LaBeouf has been shaping his public persona since he emerged from a Disney-kid adolescence—starring on the children's show Even Stevens and in a succession of PG movies like Holes—to be the saving grace of the second season of the HBO reality series Project Greenlight (and the film it spawned, The Battle of Shaker Heights). While fans and reviewers skewered the movie and its directing team, LaBeouf was praised as not only the film's best performer but the sanest and most well-adjusted person on the show. "Project Greenlight did a lot for me," he says. "It taught me that the performance doesn't end until you go home."

It also got him psychologically prepared for the public scrutiny that began when he moved from ensemble roles (in Shaker Heights and the 2006 coming-of-age drama A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints) to comic-sidekick ones (I, Robot; Constantine) to top billing in aggressively promoted summer action movies. LaBeouf developed a physical response to the attention, too: running. In another much-seen YouTube clip from the past year, he leaves a New Year's party in New York and, confronted by paparazzi, turns and sprints down the block. "You know where they're going to be," he says. "Once they're at your house and you know they're following you, you have the choice: Should I run or should I take them to the car wash and create the image of the normal guy?"

LaBeouf fleeing from paparazzi after a New Year's party on January 1, 2008

Depending on whom you talk to, the jury is still out on Shia LaBeouf's talent. Spielberg has been borderline fawning in his assessment. D.J. Caruso says, "Shia's ability to connect with everyone is rooted in honesty. It's not that he's the Everyman, it's that he believes he's in that situation, and so the audience believes he's in that situation." But moviegoers jaded by years of having semi-competent Next Big Things jammed down their throats have been skeptical. Transformers and Indiana Jones only gave the "He's no Emile Hirsch" camp more to sneer at. It's clear where his sights are set. Ever since he worked on Holes with Jon Voight, who took a shine to him, LaBeouf has been a devout student of acting. Every day, he spends a chunk of time online reading about movies, including the ones he's in. "Every comment," he says. "Every message board." And not just at the Shia-is-awesome sites frequented by tween girls—at the mean ones, too: Ain't It Cool News, CHUD, the kinds of places film fanatics go to rant about how LaBeouf's presence in the fourth installment of Indiana Jones was an affront to the franchise. "It's only recently that I became a part of their lexicon," he says. "Shia LaDouche or LaBeef and all this shit. And I understand where they're coming from. If I was a fan freak sitting at my house and I worked at Auto Zone, and some twentysomething young buck had a meteoric rise and was in every movie I ever wanted to watch, I'd hate him immediately."

Besides, LaBeouf was a fan freak once—of hip-hop even more than movies. "If you wanted to be friends with the people I was hanging out with," he says, "that was like one of the necessities." He's since shelved that dimension of himself—the part obsessed with hip-hop culture—in the interest of pleasing Texas and the Christian right. "When I was 16," he says, "I looked at my life and said, 'Really? You're a rapper/Disney Channel actor?' Akon has more street cred, you know? I used to wear baggy pants all the time, but these skinny jeans"—he grabs the fabric—"make it as though I can be whatever the fuck I want to be today. There's things you have to give up, even though you may feel comfortable. You get rid of your velour suits and your Lugz boots, and you start transitioning."

LaBeouf break dancing and freestyle rapping on The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn

The script rarely gets away from LaBeouf. It got away from him in Chicago last November, when a late-night nicotine jones ended in that trespassing charge. ("It was two hotheads," he says, "one completely in the wrong, one who wasn't enjoying his job that night, going at it about minuscule bullshit.") And the glee with which the mainstream news media, itching for a YOUNG ACTOR FLAMES OUT headline, seized on it led to the end of one of his and his father's longtime bonding rituals. "We would drink together and smoke together," LaBeouf says, "and it's just a bad deal. It's not something that is conducive to being a role model—no iconic actors that I know of have problems like that. And I don't know how to do it like a gentleman. I don't know how to have one drink."

If it sounds like an actor struggling to stay in character, it may be. "I mean, look, you get arrested, it's out of control. There's nothing 'in control' about the situation," he says. "It's not as though things happen to me and I don't say, never again." But LaBeouf concedes that sticking to the straight-and-narrow is easier said than done. "I can never say never, because of where I'm at in my life and the vices that I've let go of," he says. "But even when I was drinking, I never missed call times, ever."

So now it's no more alcohol—just Parliament Lights. And women. LaBeouf deems his female situation "extraordinary," though he refuses to discuss recent rumors tying him to Rihanna and the model Lauren Hastings. "I'm enjoying myself," he says. "But I'm not great with women, dude. I'm not a closer. I can chat all night long, but I'm not the guy who goes, 'Okay, back to my room.' I've never been that way—it's not my presence, I just can't do it. But it's not been a priority of mine for a while. That aspect of my life is always going to be there. This"—his self-described "meteoric rise"—"is not always going to be here." Besides Eagle Eye, LaBeouf has an ensemble picture, New York, I Love You, in the can for release this fall, and he's tied up with shooting Transformers 2 until late October. After that, it's hard to say. Caruso is interested in adapting the comic book Y: The Last Man, but LaBeouf isn't convinced that it's the best move for him: "I can't be the blockbuster dude forever, you know?"